Kurotsubaki Demise
by Xavon Wrentaile
Summary: "Can't Take my Eyes off You" isn't horrible, but if it was really Hayate no Gotoku, this is how episode eight would have went. Just a quick drabble.


Maria squealed in shock and annoyance as the suddenly overactive air conditioning started to lift her dress up again. She clamped down on it with her left hand and she stuck out the large pocket watch with her right hand. Both of her companions, Nagi Sanzenin and Hayate Ayasaki, were blushing furiously and looking at her shapely legs.

"Hayate-kun!" she shouted, as the butler-in-debt paused before he could take the watch.

"Yes," he said, and suddenly started moving again. As his fingers brushed Kurotsubaki, the lights in the LVPD vault seemed to flicker. And as the cursed watch left Maria's grasp, the rogue fan beneath her shut off as suddenly as it had started. Maria breathed a sigh of relief, and Hayate looked down at the talisman. The watch was quite beautiful, with its gears visible behind its glass face, a second dial in the bottom half that counted the seconds, and a marker of the month in the upper-left quadrant.

"It's a cursed clock that destroys the owner's fortune," the young man restated, "and brings them bad luck..."

The hands of the watch started to speed up, and the gears began to whine. Black smoke filled the inside, obscuring first the workings, and then the face. Finally, a spring burst out, shattering the face and clearing a path for the smoke to escape. The unexpected impact caused Hayate to drop the Kurotsubaki.

"Poor thing," a girl in a fancy kimono said as she picked up the clock.

"Isumi-san?!" the three members of the Sanzenin household exclaimed in unison, though Nagi omitted the honorific.

"What are you doing here?" the twin-tailed heiress asked.

"Hmm?" Isumi tilted her head in confusion, "Isn't this Nagi's house?"

They all hung their heads, and sighed defeatedly.

"Give it to me, Isumi-san," Hayate recovered quickly, looking down at the floor and the hem of Isumi's robe nervously, "That clock is cursed."

"Not anymore," the young exorcist said sadly.

"But it just... My skirt..." Maria complained.

"And then you gave it to Hayate-sama," Isumi agreed, "And it tried to give him bad luck."

"So?" Nagi's tone reflected the trio's shared confusion.

"It tried to give _Hayate-sama _bad luck," her friend repeated with emphasis. Realization filled Maria's and Nagi's faces, and they looked at the butler with expressions of pity and amazement.

"So what is going to happen to me?" the young man asked.

"You would have left here, and been separated from Nagi and Maria-san," the young spiritualist explained, "While wandering, you would have run into Nishizawa-san by a fountain. The water would have splashed on her, and she would have got something in her eye. You would have leaned in close, and held her face to get it out. At which point Nagi would have arrived. She would have seen you, apparently kissing Nishizawa-san, the outline of her underwear visible through her wet clothing. And naturally, Nagi would have become quite angry."

Isumi blushed as she relayed the last part of the vision she had received from the broken watch. And despite the fact it was only words, Nagi glared at her butler.

"That does sound pretty unlucky," Hayate agreed, looking at her mistress out of the corner of his eye.

"And how is that any different from normal?" Maria asked sarcastically, squinting at him.

"Uhh..." he tried to answer, but suddenly his memories kicked in.

_Going into the bath injured, seeing Maria was already there, and then passing out from the blood loss._

_Delivering a towel to Nagi, only to find that she was standing up in the bath, completely naked with the curtains open._

_In the hot spring under the generator with Sakuya, water plastering her clothing against her too developed for her age body._

_At the cafe, walking in on Ayumu changing, with Nagi right there as well._

"I guess it isn't," he admitted as a dozen more events flashed through his mind. Understanding dawned on him, and he continued, "So the worst thing it could do to me..."

"Was something that probably would have happened anyway," Nagi concluded for him darkly.

Hayate looked at the remains of the watch, thinking he should be depressed. Instead he simply sighed again, resigned to his fate.

"Now what do we do?" Maria prompted, "Can we still trade this for Tsugumi-chan?"

"If they don't like it, who cares?" Nagi shrugged, "She not even a canon character, and she kinda 'The Scrappy'."

"'Da Sucrapi?" Hayate wore a look of obvious confusion as her tried to mimic the two English words Nagi used.

"Jeez, Hayate, haven't you read that web site I told you to?"

"Oujo-sama you know my English isn't that good..."

The Vegas policemen just watched the quartet blankly as they left the vault.


End file.
